Ian West

 ECONOMIC EXPANSION WITHIN CHINA, INDIA, AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AFTER THE BLACK PLAGUE. (Author’s name) (Course name) (Instructor’s name) (Date) ECONOMIC EXPANSION WITHIN CHINA, INDIA, AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AFTER THE BLACK PLAGUE. The black plague widespread befell the people in Eurasia and North Africa, causing deaths of 75-200 million people. It is recorded as the deadliest pandemic in human history. This plague left devastating effects in the countries affected. The effects were either short term or long term. The short-term effects were; the culmination of wars that were happening and an abrupt decline in trade. The more lasting and grave effects were the extreme reduction of the size of land being cultivated; this was as a result of the death of many of the workers. Consequently, it led to the downfall of many landowners. The landowners had to offer attractive wages to retain their workers. There was also an extreme drop in population as millions of people succumbed to the plague. The black plague also had social and economic effects. People fled from their homes to the countryside to avoid catching the terrible disease. However, there was no refuge in the countryside as the plague spread rapidly. People deserted their ailing family and friends, as each person sort their immunity. Doctors refused to treat the sick and religious leaders refused to perform funeral rites. All sailors were held in isolation until it was certain they were not infected by the plague; all this led to the cessation of work being done and slowed down the economic growth. 1 The economy experienced abrupt and extreme expansion after the black plague. Due to the decrease of workers, it was challenging to attain goods through trade and produce them; this led to the soaring prices of goods imported and those produced locally. The plague had also transferred to animals that were used in trade. As a result, the plague spread along the established trade routes. The distention of trade yielded numerous benefits such as; improvement of technology and increased access to material goods, as well as widespread knowledge. Resulting from the illness and death of many workers, there was a shortage of the workforce. This prompted the landlords to increase the peasant's wages so to retain them, The demand for labor was so high that workers were not tied to one master. Instead, the workers were hired by lords who needed them and so, masters had to profitably compensate the workers to prevent them from leaving. The workers felt the effect of the new rise of wages and subsequently, their standards of living improved rapidly. The human population declined as a result of death; this translated to fewer people consuming the food that was cultivated. As a result of this, the general nutrition of people in the rural areas, as well as those in the cities, improved. There was a decreased demand for food and the governments also stoked gains to prevent prices from rising; this led to a drop in the price of most grains. Financial standings and distinctions were becoming less distinct and obscure and social standings become sharper. The noble families turned to a flamboyant sense of fashion to accentuate their social standings and differentiate them from the peasants. They saw the peasants as a threat as the peasants were becoming slightly more empowered. The peasants rebelled when the aristocracy strived to resist the changes that occurred as a result of the black plague. The Ottoman intervention reversed the diminishing irrigation system and the decreasing agrarian output; this had come about as a result of the migration of people from the countryside to cities, caused by declining agricultural production and rising rents in the countryside. Due to the shortage of workers, the vast network of irrigation canals became harder to control resulting in the decay of these canals. This deteriorating irrigation system left extensive lands uncultivable. The farmers moved to the cities to search for better fortune and so the society becomes more urban. After the black plaque, prevention and containment of disaster, city governance and politics took a sharp turn for the better; this was to ensure that in case of the re-occurrence of the plague, there would not be drastic social and economic effects as before as the governments would be well prepared. In conclusion, the study of the economic expansion in China, Asia, and the Ottoman Empire after the black plague offers three important intuitions. The first is that the occurrence of the black plague played a big role in economic development as it drew the attention of these governments to the necessity of putting in place complex ways of dealing with re-occurrences without jeopardizing the countries' economy. Second, it promoted the elimination of old and flawed models of social, economic, and political structures. Third, governments gained knowledge and full understanding of the plague in the larger disease ecology. 2 Bibliography. Sussman, George D. "Was the black death in India and China?." Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2011): 319-355. Angus, Maddison. Development Centre studies Chinese economic performance in the long run. OECD publishing, 1998. Hsu, Sara. Economic Reform in Asia: China, India, and Japan. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016. Benedict, Carol Ann. Bubonic plague in nineteenth-century China. Stanford University Press, 1996.